Search This Blog

Without the right to communicate and democratisation of communication, the right to life, liberty, freedom of speech and expression is meaningless.It attempts to keep track of traditional media, offline media and digital media that faces the onslaught of monopolistic tendencies and is wary of localisation of media. It is part of Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties (CFCL) For Details: https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/mediavigil/info

Climate Change in Social Vaccum

Apropos 'No more kindergarten approach to climate' (Down To Earth May 31, 2007), the current politics of climate change entails keeping society and social sciences religiously out of the climate change research from the very outset till date. Therefore, climate change debate suffers from paucity of social perspective. Until and unless this missing link is fixed there is no way to break the stalemate.

The UN Security Council held its first-ever discussion on climate change as a serious threat to security and future political stability on April 17, 2007 that created so much heat that Indian Parliament was compelled to discuss climate change in early May 2007 although Indian society does and did not deem climate change to be a problem of utmost priority since it is grappling with agrarian crisis and farmers suicides as its pressing priorities. It is clear that Indian parliament was under tremendous international pressure to adopt climate change as its problem. Isn't absence of similar pressure to discuss farmers suicide both at national and international level quite manifest.

Let all the members of all the legislative bodies of the world in general and Indian ones in particular use the ongoing suicides of farmers as the touch stone decide their action from a bundle of competing priorities. If they have failed to take cognisance of the immediacy of agrarian crisis afflicting the farmers, it only shows how divorced they are from the people who they claim to represent. They are following the dictates of not their own people instead they are pandering to the likes and dislikes of the veto power holding members of the Security Council. Although no action emerged from these Security Council meeting or other meetings, it does reveal growing uneasiness within the capitalist world about social unrest that is likely to come with global warming.

Notwithstanding stark differences between US and Europe on climate change issue, it is a fact that both treat climate change as a global security issue as opposed to human security. The US report, "National Security and the Threat of Climate Change", undertaken by the government-funded national security think tank, the Center for Naval Analyses presents global climate change as a serious national security threat, which could impact Americans at home, impact US military operations, and heighten global tensions. British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, president of the Security Council said. “There are few greater potential threats to our economies ... but also to peace and security itself.”

World Food Conference 1974 in Rome titled “World Hunger: Causes and Remedies” proposed technical solutions like Green Revolution, transfer of technology and population control for the food crisis which had proven failures over several decades. Now the proposal to mitigate possible adverse climate change includes solutions like “a major expansion in nuclear power, the use of GM crops to boost biofuel production, and reliance on unproven technologies…” gives one a sense of deja vu.

It has put the UN's climate group on a collision course with those who argue that simply replacing one set of technologies with another set of technologies won't work, especially when there are such big downsides with some of them. Nuclear reactors are dangerous and land clearance and chemical pesticides and fertilisers used to grow fuel crops can cause huge environmental damage.At the upcoming negotiations in Bali in late 2007 on the post-2012 framework for addressing climate change when the Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment period expires, it is high time India and other developing countries rejected mechanisms like Joint Implementation, Emissions Trading and the Clean Development Mechanism, until equal per capita entitlements are accepted.

Indeed the danger of limited debate and consciousness is that they can be easily captured by vested interests. Climate change is too serious a 'business' to be left only to governments to make it the top most priority with ulterior motives. It is these interests who linked poverty to population and turned it into an ongoing 'family planning business' under the dictates of these very veto powers who are currently asking India to take obligatory commitments for emission cuts to combat global warming while paying lip-service to public transport and land use change induced global warming due to indiscriminate urbanisation and mega hydro power projects.

P.S: US and China together are the biggest violators but there is a highly Irrational, Mischievous and Motivated tendency to club India and China together in the entire global warming debate. This must be dismissed with all the strength .

Get link

Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Google+

Email

Other Apps

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Note: Procedural Establishments Under The Code Of Criminal Procedure, 1973: Section 197 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 gives protection to a person who is still a Public Servant at the time the prosecution is launched, and also when he is no longer a public servant. This is to protect the Public Servant from a case being filed against him after his retirement. When the government servant or the employee is not removable from his office without the sanction of the Central Government, then the same is necessary. Sanction under this section is not necessary before a Public Servant could be prosecuted for an offence of bribery under Section 161 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860. There are three facets in the consideration of the protection given by Section 197 of the Cr.P.C. to the acts done by public officers. (i) The act complained attaches to it the official character of the person doing it; (ii) The official character or status of the accused gave him an opportunity of doing the…

Press ReleaseQuestionable and illegal UIDAI completes four yearsMaj Gen S.G.Vombatkere, VSM tell President that UID is extra-legal,
unethical, coercive
New Delhi, 28 Jan, 2013: Prime
Minister headed Cabinet Committee on UID related matters (CCUIDRM) which also
deal with National Population Register (NPR) has ensured that Unique
Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) continues to complete its four years
of existence without any legal basis and without disclosing that UID database
and NPR database is being merged with the electoral database. UIDAI was created
by a notification of Planning Commission dated January28, 2009.The notification is attached. As of as on
January 2, 2013, Cabinet Committee on
Unique Identification Authority of India related issues includes Prime
Minister, Sharad Pawar, Minister of Agriculture and Minister of Food Processing
Industries, P. Chidambaram, Minister of Finance, Sushilkumar Shinde, Minister
of Home Affairs, Mallikarjun Kharge, Minister of Labour and …

At a program to mark the 76th birth anniversary of late Prabhash Joshi, well known columnist and former editor of Nayi Duniya, Jansatta and Indian Express, speaker after speaker demanded the formation of Third Press Commission. The program was organised on July 15 at Satyagrah Mandap, Raj Ghat by Prabhash Parampra Nyas and Gandhi Smriti awam Darshan Samiti.

It has come to light that the efforts of senior journalists like Ram Bahadur Rai, Ram Sharan Joshi and Kuldeep Nayar have been demanding setting up of the Third Press Commission from the Manmohan Singh Govt but due to resistance from the de facto head of the state, it has not been constituted so far.

Press Council of India in its report of 2001 had also recommended setting up of a Third Press Commission during Justice PB Swant's tenure. Justice G.N. Ray, the Press Council chairman also recommended it in his speech in 2009 in Kolkata.

In July 2011, at a function in Indore too, journalists marched in the streets demanding…